The story starter provides more than one billion different story starters. The Story Starter randomly generates 1,862,718,000 story starters. This idea generator can be used for short stories, novels, plays, scripts, or just for fun.

The starter generates a sentence from which to build a story. Also featured is a Story Starter for Kids.

iFake Text Message is a great tool for creating authentic looking materials to engage students and shift materials design into a genre that’s both relevant and familiar. The tool enables you to create a screen image of a text conversation.

Our goal with Fable is to give you a whole new way for expressing yourself virtually. Use your own avatar in augmented reality to tell stories, express feelings, share moments and create memories. This is the new generation of emoji and the next step in making virtual communication more personal. Emojis are old, create a Fable!

Want to know how to do great storytelling on your website? Well, using a parallax layout is one way and here's a post that lists the most effective 11 examples.

I'm periodically asked about telling stories on websites, so these examples should spark some ideas -- whether you use parallax or not.

While it's true that most of these examples are educational and not necessarily focused on business, that doesn't mean you can't make the translation. Think about one of your signature stories -- maybe your brand story about how your business got started and why, and then how that translated into a unique offering in the marketplace.

"In this blog, Jason Ohler discusses 20 revelations about digital storytelling. From simple storytelling technologies in the early days of smartphones to the plethora of information that is available today, he tells a story about the good and the bad, the new and the old, and how we continue learning to find our own narrative ..."

"Too often, student voice is treated as a novelty. But it should surprise no one that the same people who spend a majority of their time in school would have a lot of constructive ideas about it. ...This issue looks at student-led and school-based collaborations that elevate student voice and agency. "

Mary Zdrojewski was in for a surprise. Not long ago, the librarian in the Scio (NY) Central School District had been assigned a class of teens at her K–12 school. Zdrojewski asked the students what they wanted from their library class, expecting to hear requests for coding, robotics, or hands-on projects. “They just wanted me to read aloud to them,” Zdrojewski recalls. “I tried short stories, including the ‘Guys Read’ series, because I thought they would be ‘cool.’” But she soon discovered that “the students really wanted pictures to look at.”

Picture books and older students: More educators are making this match in their teaching, with significant success. While graphic and illustrated novels gain traction among teen and tween readers, traditional picture books hold a place of their own and provide versatile, effective teaching tools for a range of students. The ubiquity of social media might explain why today’s youth are particularly visually oriented, but that’s only part of the picture, says Wendy Lukehart, youth collections coordinator at the District of Columbia Public Library’s Penn Center. “People of all ages have always responded well to pictures,” she says. For centuries, she notes, humans spent quite a bit of time gazing at art, and, in the 20th century, flipping through photography-centric magazines, such as Life, to engage with current events and culture.

"BoomWriter Media, Inc. today announced its second annual Online Writing Camps, which offer five-day camp sessions where students can collaborate to write and publish a chapter book. Teachers promote and run their own camps, selecting camp dates and flexible daily schedules.

"BoomWriter will provide support for educators with web-based professional development will give teachers strategies and ongoing direction on how to provide their campers with effective feedback and how to manage students’ revision requests.

"The Online Writing Camps include writing instruction, personalized feedback, and collaborative peer review. To get their campers started each day, educators post a web-based writing lesson provided by BoomWriter.

"At the end of the camp, participants receive a published, paperback copy of the story sent directly to their home by BoomWriter. Teachers will be paid within two weeks of completing camp."

Your students can become moviemakers, too, thanks to some powerful apps for mobile devices. With these tools, your children can take videos and edit their work to make professional quality movies using iOS devices (iPads and iPhones) and Android tablets.

One good thing about this easy-to-use technology is that students can still use important English language arts skills like writing a narrative, planning a sequential story, and including key details when getting ready to make a movie. These apps can enhance the work that you are doing with children in the classroom and give them room to be creative storytellers.

Engaging, multimedia-rich digital stories can capture the attention of students and increase their interest in exploring new ideas.Combining storytelling with powerful digital creates a truly authentic learning experience that helps students develop a wide range of intellectual skills.Hope you like my Facebook Page full of knowledge-sharing goodness https://www.facebook.com/sociallearningcommunity/.

"Dr. Meals grew up in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. He attended Rice University, majored in biology, and gained a deep appreciation for the diversity and adaptations of animal life. At Vanderbilt University Medical School, he further explored the workings and failings of human tissues, especially bone.

"An orthopedic surgery residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital gave Dr. Meals the opportunity to drill down, both literally and figuratively, on living bone. Following a hand surgery fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Meals joined the faculty at UCLA where he is currently a Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery. He has served as President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and has also been on the editorial board of the Journal of Hand Surgery for most of his career. This included a five-year term as Editor-in-Chief.

"Along the way, Dr. Meals lived in Turkey for two years and took the opportunity to travel extensively in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. These trips expanded his interest in the historical and cultural aspects of bone. He continues to be an ardent traveler and has discovered interesting information about bone during his visits to 48 states and 49 countries.

"Dr. Meals has authored two books, One Hundred Orthopedic Conditions Every Doctor Should Understand and The Hand Owner’s Manual. A Hand Surgeon’s Thirty-Year Collection of Important Information and Fascinating Facts. Now he has turned his attention to extolling the many virtues of bone in his blog www.aboutbone.com , which will eventually expand into a book.

"When not seeing patients, teaching, traveling, or writing, Dr. Meals is likely strengthening his bones by gardening, cycling, or jogging."

Jim Lerman's insight:

Meals writes a quirky, erudite but down-to-earth blog about bones, medicine, and history. It's enjoyable and you can learn a lot; interesting mixture of science, social studies, and written expression. Probably best for high school on up to any age.

"There are many books on the subject and I’ve found flow to be highly beneficial. My process of flow looks like this:

1. Go to the gym and workout hard so endorphins are released and I’m relaxed2. Do five minutes of meditation before I start3. Drink a black tea or coffee before I start4. Warm up on some inspiring videos on YouTube that give me goosebumps

"Once I have done these four things, I’m usually able to get into flow really quickly."

Jim Lerman's insight:

This article has additional practical suggestions and strategies. I see it as a useful resource. Nice graphic, above, too.

Meet the Little Prompter The Little Prompter is a compact, versatile, and easy to use tool that helps you quickly deliver a polished video to your students, to your employees, or to the public. Up until now, teleprompters have been clunky, expensive, and difficult to operate–and many required film studios or a production team. The Little Prompter changes all of that. It’s a simple tool that promises to help you nail a smooth delivery using just a smartphone and your desktop computer, DLSR, or webcam.

If you want to create professional videos a teleprompter will really help you make an impression on your audience. This clever and inexpensive device turns your cell phone and webcam into a simple teleprompter. Check it out!

Teachers and parents, use these picture books to model the process of writing a story. Some of these books show how writers get ideas. Others show the challenges of plotting and drafting the words in a story. All are about a part of the process of storytelling. Kids need plenty of these examples to encourage them as they develop their own story telling abilities.

You’ll want to look for books that meet your children where they are. What are your children or students struggling with currently? Is it finding ideas? Start there. Maybe it’s facing the challenges that come with writing a draft. I’ve divided the list into three parts: Finding an Idea, Plotting and Drafting, and The Writer’s Life and Getting Published.

Who says children's books can't teach us the craft of writing? I had no idea of the number of creative and adorable books on the subject.. Wish I had some of these when I was in school. Better late than never.

***This review was written by Penelope Silvers for her curated content on "Writing Rightly"***

Select a character to represent you and speak for you as you talk about yourself, your life story and your interests. Introduce yourself, talk about who you are, what you do, what you're interested in, what you like or don't like.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.